Curt Benjamin - [Seven Brothers 03] - The Gates of Heaven

by Curt Benjamin

  Chapter Thirty

  “DON’T STAND on ceremony with us,” the Lady SienMa bade him with a gesture at the food spread on the table between them. “You must be very hungry from your travels.”

  “Always,” Llesho agreed, gratified that he had drawn the smile he had hoped from her ladyship. As he tore off a bit of steamed bun and popped it in his mouth, however, Llesho wondered if he was really there at all. Was he still inhabiting a dream? And whose dream was it? Trying to figure it out was giving him a headache, so he decided to ask.

  “When I leave here, will this visit have happened?” he asked in a low and musing tone, one that his hosts might politely choose not to have heard. “Will anyone remember it but me?”

  In answer, her ladyship took an egg and held it up by the fingertips of one hand. With a short curved knife she sliced off the top, shell and all, to reveal the rich golden center. “I remember everything,” she told him, holding the egg between them.

  Their eyes met, his own filled with questions, hers offering answers he might never understand. Ages passed in the depths of her gaze, and memories of war and death past counting. His own bloody death: how many times had he fallen in battle, defending the Great Goddess, his wife, through countless lives? She had seen them all, and he read in her glance both the sorrow of those memories and the hope for a better outcome this time. He took the egg, which seemed like a promise between them. Spring coming, life renewed. They would hold back the fire and the darkness together.

  With a little nod to show that she had understood all that had passed unsaid between them, her ladyship picked up a second egg and again she sliced the top off. This time, however, she cradled the egg in her palm, which she held just below her heart for a moment before offering it to Shou. Had she been capable of it, he thought that she might have blushed herself, an idea that boggled the mind. So many ages, so much she had seen of slaughter and pain and the uneasy peace that fell between struggles that he wondered what gentle emotion could remain to unsettle such a heart.

  Shou’s eyes grew moist. He took the egg with a tender smile so full of joy and protectiveness and fear that Llesho dropped his gaze.Too much, he thought,I don’t want to know that much about you. After the first bite the emperor offered a spoonful to her ladyship, who swallowed the creamy yellow center with downcast eyes. Llesho was on the point of excusing himself from the private moment when Habiba entered the tent. Instantly the magician sized up the situation and, with a bow so low that his beard almost touched the ground, offered his congratulations.

  “A fertile union casts its blessing on us all,” he said, rising once again to show not pleasure but doubt in the tight purse of his lips.

  “Can the hope of life bring anything but light to the darkness we face, magician?” the Lady SienMa chided her adviser with a hand resting defensively over her womb.

  Llesho sealed his lips tightly, while questions swirled in his mind. Somehow he’d gotten the idea that the mortal gods didn’t reproduce. They were too old, too much of the spirit world to reap that which they planted in the mortal realm. Gods usually left the harvesting to others, whatever the crop. He wondered what kind of curse or blessing was born in a child of war conceived amid the greatest struggle for the survival of all the realms. Would the kingdoms of heaven and earth and the underworld survive long enough to see the birth of a god’s child? With a shiver of superstitious terror the question he feared to even consider snaked its way into his thoughts: what sort of child—human or serpent—would the mortal goddess of war and the emperor of Shan produce between them?

  He’d wondered much the same about the emerald bamboo snake demon who had entered the Qubal khan’s bed as the Lady Chaiujin. But Chimbai-Khan had been deceived. Shou had joined the mortal goddess of war in serpent form. But that had been a dream. Shou was neither serpent nor magician. The dream readers of Ahkenbad might have found meaning in the shapes the emperor took in the dream world. But there was no evidence that the lady or her human consort carried into the waking world the physical properties of their dream-selves. No evidence that they didn’t either, but he decided not to give that thought credence.

  “I asked Sento to gather the others,” Habiba reported blandly. He had schooled his features to show none of his emotions. Llesho strove to do likewise, but with less success. He wished he’d sent Kaydu in his place, as any reasonable king would have done. With any luck she would have kept all the personal stuff out of her report to him, and he’d never have had to know any of it.

  His brothers began arriving quickly at Sento’s summons, so he didn’t have to wait long in a company that had become so strained that Dognut refrained even from any musical comment. Balar, with his usual enthusiasm, noted Llesho’s presence with a wide grin and a hug. “Dreaming again, brother? It’s been a long time since you included us in your travels!”

  Shokar followed with a hug of his own. “It’s so good to see you again, and unscathed, for a change.” Neither brother stood on the ceremony due a king.

  Lluka hung back, however, correcting his brother with dire warning in his voice. “He hasn’t been traveling. At the moment of greatest need, his strength has failed him.”We are all doomed fell between Lluka’s words, but his fellow princes understood them anyway. Llesho closed his eyes for a moment of solitude before he entered the fray. He’d forgotten how taxing it had become to deal with Lluka’s madness.

  The healer-prince entered then, a little apart from his brothers but with the healer Carina and Bolghai, the Harnish shaman. They seemed distracted among themselves, as if interrupted in the middle of some deep conversation about salves or elixirs. Adar, however, had heard enough. He gave Llesho the slow, wise smile that had soothed him as a child. His words he reserved for his brothers, “At the last, perhaps his strength did fail. But not, surely, at greatest need, or he wouldn’t be here at all. Nor, I think, would the rest of us remain to debate the point.”

  In spite of their brother’s reassurance, Shokar was quick to remorse. “Did I hurt you?” he asked, and stepped away as if even his close presence might do further harm to unseen injuries. “I should have asked before cracking your ribs like that.”

  “No injuries,” Llesho promised, though he knew he skirted the truth with his answer. His physical injuries, healed now, had been slight among the pirates. They’d been no worse at the end of that adventure than they had been the last time he’d seen his brothers, so they seemed to require no mention now.

  As for the weariness of the spirit that had gripped him after his contest with the great storm raised by Master Markko, he didn’t know what to tell them. Lluka had sensed something, however, and he’d need to address it soon. All his gathered brothers but Adar looked to him with worried frowns.

  The healer-prince brushed the hair from Llesho’s forehead, fingertips finding the nubs of antlers beneath the dark strands. His arm had mended since they’d parted on the plains of the Qubal people so long ago, it seemed. But Adar still read him as clearly as the recipe for any potion. “You’ve been through a lot,” he observed softly, as if he held a frightened bird in his hand. “Not, I think, however, so much that you come to us in defeat.”

  “Less than victory, but more than rout,” Llesho assured them. “But where are Tinglut and Mergen? Not gone to make war on each other, I hope.”

  Mergen joined them in the Lady SienMa’s tent then, an entrance so opportune that Llesho wondered if he’d been listening at the tent flap.

  “Still here, young king.” Apparently, he heard at least the last of Llesho’s remarks. His next words made that clearer still: “And Tinglut-Khan, who raised his tents at an aloof distance, follows close upon my footsteps.”

  The khan raised both his hands in greeting to show they were empty of weapons. In so doing he acknowledged the rank of those in attendance without accepting any authority over him as a bow might have done. “At the risk of seeming discourteously abrupt, may I ask about that scamp, my nephew?”

  “Well, or nearly so
,” Llesho reassured him.

  They had but minutes to share the more frightening details. Sawghar, the Gansau Wastrel who had on occasion served in Harlol’s place in Llesho’s cadre, soon joined them to represent the Tashek in council. Then, with the jingle of silver medals on his silken coats, Tinglut brought their number to its full tally.

  “I have had my breakfast, and look for none from your ladyship’s table,” Tinglut announced, his hands raised in a more abrupt version of Mergen’s greeting. “This one—” he pointed an elbow at Sento, who had followed him in and now set about gathering cups and fresh tea for the newcomers, “—this one said we are called to council. I had thought we were finally to ride, and now I see that we are again to dangle from the tails of this young shaman-king.”

  “Dangle from my coattails or not, I do call upon those who would follow to ride now, or lose everything.” Llesho stiffened his spine, his chin raised in the way that Master Jaks had warned him against so long ago. Then they strove to hide his rank from assassins who would have murdered him before he learned the statecraft to stay alive. Now his steady gaze, deep and dark with decisions made and consequences survived, matched the resolute tilt of his head.

  The Tinglut-Khan read all of that as a leader of long practice must. If he continued to harbor doubts, he kept them to himself for now. “And my daughter? Any further news of the Lady Chaiujin?”

  Reflexively, Llesho’s hand went to his Thebin knife. “As Mergen-Khan and his advisers have reported to you, to our regret none of the Qubal people or any of my followers have ever met your daughter. The Emerald Bamboo Snake demon stole her name and her place among Chimbai’s clans, who took their own terrible losses at her fangs.”

  Mergen gave a slow nod to remind Tinglut of their own conversations. “And is there any word of the false Lady Chaiujin who has caused so much pain to so many?”

  “The lady followed us to Pontus, where she continued her murderous habits. The magicians of the Apadisha determined that her demon spirit somehow attached itself to the jade cup she gave me in the tent of Chimbai-Khan. They were able to contain her within it, so for the present, we are free of her influences.” With his thumb he stroked the new decoration set into the butt, a signet as it seemed, carved out of wood. Those among the party who had advised and urged him on his path took this information as the sort of intelligence they expected of a king who must fight demons for the gates of heaven.

  Tinglut-Khan, however, had his own agenda. “Where is it?” he asked, meaning the cup. He examined Llesho from head to toe with a greedy eye. Llesho thought he might snatch the cup out of his possession and release the demon to demand an accounting if he knew where he kept her hidden.

  “He can’t help you,” Mergen deflected the Eastern khan from his interrogation. “He is here only in a dream.”

  “Is that so?”

  Llesho answered Tinglut with a guilty shrug. “Afraid so.”

  “Enough,” Shou said. “He cannot help you now. Be content that something has been done to curb the murderer of your daughter, sir. This holy king has traveled far by magical means to join our council. Let us hear what he has to say.”

  With her own hands, her ladyship offered Llesho tea. “Our trusted magician advises us that you have found allies in Pontus.”

  He took the cup as gingerly as if it held one of Markko’s poisons. He trusted her ladyship with the success of his quest, but had grown wary long ago of the dreams she inhabited.

  She had brought him to the purpose of his travels, however, and Llesho bowed his head to acknowledge the truth of Habiba’s report.

  “At Pontus we found Prince Menar a slave in the house of a physician who practices a strict sect of the Bithynian religion. It suits his beliefs to treat his servants well. As with the rest of us who found ourselves in hostile lands, Menar kept his identity a secret.”

  “And are the stories about his sight also true? Is Menar blind?” Balar asked.

  His brother’s gifts balanced the universe. Llesho knew by the sorrow in his eyes that Balar had already seen the answer. “Yes,” he said for those who hadn’t already tallied up the costs, wondering which of his own escapes Menar had paid for with his sight. He’d been around that argument with Master Den already, though, and knew he couldn’t add every ill of the world to his own account.

  Each of the Thebin princes reacted to the news of their brother as their tempers dictated. Adar remained a calm center, though sorrow deepened the lines around his mouth and between his brows. Shokar, who had once claimed to be no soldier, clenched his hand on his hilts and Llesho felt the same impulse to fight the long-ago enemy who had so hurt his brother. Balar took Adar for his model and tried to compose his face, but tears ran a trail down his nose and clung woefully from his upper lip. From Lluka, there was a mad smile.

  “You’ve seen it, too,” he said to Llesho. “There is no escape.”

  By that his brother meant the dreams of devastation, fire, and wind and the worlds of gods and men in chaos. Llesho didn’t believe it had to end that way, though, and paraphrased Master Den’s reminder to the magician-scholars of Pontus. “Prophecy is not a coin with two sides but a box with many faces. We have to see around the edges to a brighter face.”

  He was meant to stop the destruction that Lluka dreamed, and finding Menar even in his wounded state fulfilled another part of Lleck’s quest, showing, in his metaphor, another face to the prophecy.

  “So, brother,” he agreed, “the prophecy may speak true that we have no escape from the dire consequences of events set in motion long ago by a miscast wish and a foolish Jinn.”

  Then he added with the grim determination that had driven him across the wide expanse of land and sea between Farshore and Pontus, “Victory, however, is possible. And I will have victory. The Grand Apadisha sends ten thousand of his Daughters of the Sword. They sail for Edris as we speak. I’ve come to count the armies we bring to meet them on this side of the Mariner Sea.”

  “Ten thousand from the sultan,” Mergen said. “When do they count landfall?”

  “Two weeks, maybe three, depending on wind and weather. Can you match them with an equal number from the Qubal clans at Edris?”

  “That very number of horsemen await the word to ride,” Mergen assured him with a knowing smile. The number had been decided long ago.

  “An equal number from the Tinglut,” the khan who took his name from his people contributed, unwilling to be bested in the matter of warriors under his banner. “But I will want vengence for my daughter at the end of this great battle of yours.”

  “Justice, surely,” Llesho agreed. “I would not carry the consequences of vengence through another lifetime.”

  “The Tinglut have different beliefs in such matters, young king. But theological discussions can wait until we can debate them at our comfort in the Palace of the Sun.”

  Llesho bowed to accept this compromise and turned to the emperor for his tally.

  “Twice that number from the empire, and more.” Shou threw in his own armies, giving credit where due: “We have Wastrels among us, and a contingent of Thebin freedom fighters follow our banner. Another of mercenaries ride to reclaim their honor in the Golden City.”

  “And we are not so far from Edris as all that,” Habiba assured him with a knowing smile. “You will find a familiar river flows not a day’s ride from camp.”

  The Onga, where he had traveled briefly with the Qubal people. Llesho returned the smile.

  Her ladyship, the mortal goddess of war, had said nothing while they made their reports, but called Sento with a sign to clear away the table. For security’s sake, no other servant was present. They waited, therefore, while Shou’s attendant cleared away teapots and cups and dishes covered with crumbs and bits of egg and fruit. When he had done, he spread a map where the breakfast had been.

  “You sail to Edris?” Her ladyship traced the route from Pontus with a finger, but her brow knotted with the question.

  “Not quite,”
he answered, understanding her concern well enough. Success depended on giving the enemy as little time to prepare for attack as possible, which meant moving in secret. Not even the best of generals could transport an army unnoticed through the center of a port city like Edris.

  “There’s a private cove a little to the south of the city where the ships of the Sultan will make landfall.” Llesho pointed to a place on the map just below Edris that looked like some great sea creature had taken a round bite out of the land. “When we get closer to shore, Kaydu will scout ahead to track Markko’s armies and report back.”

  He didn’t mention his plan for a little dream travel scouting on his own, but Habiba guessed something. “I do not count my daughter expendable,” he qualified what he was about to say, “but she’s sworn her allegiance to a holy king sacred to the Great Goddess herself.” Llesho himself, that meant. “If I may advise: were I such a king, I would reserve the greater risks to my own life for those occasions on which the fates of all the known universes rest. Let others take the risks at lesser moments according to their stations.”

  Llesho dropped his chin to show he understood and valued the gift of Habiba’s wisdom. But he couldn’t take the magician’s advice, at least not this time. “Sometimes the fate of worlds rests in large battles spread across great bloody battlefields. Sometimes it rests on a single word, spoken at the right moment.”

  Her ladyship had listened with her finger resting on the map, where Edris met the sea. Now she moved her hand to cover Llesho’s where it lay over the sultan’s private cove. “Words seldom work on the mad,” she reminded him.